Would you like to see more private money in public schools?

From the outside you may think that you have great ideas in how to educated our country's kids. But, from a practical,workable solution, it is no solution at all. For many of the students attending school today, teachers and administrators deal with far more than merely teaching them to read and write. From the vast number of broken and dysfunctional homes, teachers and staff are the only stable factors in many of their lives. Teachers are mentors, surrogate parents, counselors,and defenders

. Our school has an Awards Night at the end of each year for the ten outstanding seniors. Its a big deal because its an Honor Night where faculty, parents, administrators and the honored student come together and scholarships and special honors are presented. Pictures in the paper with the student and their and proud moms' and dads' who get to bask in their child's achievements. I was asked to "represent" the "parent part" of an outstanding young man who in spite of a dysfunctional, unhappy home, he became determined to make something of his life and from the time he entered school, I saw a something in him that I found so appealing because he was so sad and seemed to be reaching out for someone to just care a little. Sometimes that reaching out was inappropriate behavior and defiance but I found myself tucking him under my wing making sure he had every opportunity there was to succeed. It wasn't easy at first because he had some real emotional issues and all thru the years, I never saw a parent on Parent Day, at a school conference, or school function of any kind. He would come to school early and stay late. When he asked if I would be his "parent" on this memorable night, I remember asking him if his parents weren't going to attend and he said simply "no", "they couldn't make it and besides, he really didn't even want them too."

In a perfect world, each child would have a caring, engaged parent(s) whose whole lives revolved around them and worked to bring up stable, functioning, kids who were given every opportunity to be the best they could possibly be. Unfortunately that's not the case and if you think that private schools can begin to manage the huge issues facing communities or have the "manpower" to do so, I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken.

In today's government schools, the teachers, by and large, are not as dedicated as you seem to indicate. I'm not intimating that they don't exist at all, but in hundreds of examples around the country, teachers will abandon their students at the drop of a hat to march on city hall or the state capitol in an attempt to get higher pay or more vacation etc. Last year the teachers in Wisconsin shut down the entire state's government schools in protest of the legislature's attempt to save the state from financial bankruptcy. Also in Chicago, the teachers put their students in last place when it came to their fight for increased COLA's.

In example after example government school teachers have indicated that they are union members first and teachers last. Again there are isolated dedicated educators in their numbers, but by and large the teachers in government run schools are in it for pay and benefits well ahead of students. The opposite is true for the majority of teachers in private schools; they are there because they are dedicated to the scholastic advancement of their students, especially in schools operated in conjunction with church groups, while their pay and benefits are important, their student’s educational advancement takes primacy.

Absent government run schools there will be sufficient privately run schools to insure the nation’s youth have the educational opportunities required, and at lower cost to taxpayers and parents. In addition the schools will be there to educate their students and not there to indoctrinate their charges with politically correct nonsense prevalent in today’s government run schools.

Not being from Wisconsin, I don't have intimate knowledge of what Gov. Walker campaigned on, but when the state legislature was about to pass a law that changed the way public unions bargained for pay & benefits, the teachers there abandoned their classrooms in a heartbeat to go to Madison to protest the move. While there, the teachers en masse, were getting fraudulent "sick" excuses in order to continue to be paid while away from work. That indicated to me that the teachers in the government schools in Wisconsin are neither dedicated to their profession nor honest in their dealings with their employers.

Regarding the wage levels for private school teachers, no one is forcing any of them to teach. If pay is a motivator and only private schools existed, the marketplace will force pay rates to an acceptable level.

Your last comment, in order to be true would require an amendment to the constitution, today there is no constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in the education field at all! I'm not familiar with the 50 state constitutions to know whether or not the individual states have the authority or not. If there were no government run schools there would be no diversion of funds to take place. Additionally the constitution does not have any provisions regarding the withholding of funds or services to those that can "afford" to pay for them themselves. A provision authorizing such would be considered to be anti-freedom and would probably violate the 14th Amendment.